Awakenings
3/10/11 13:31![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsI suppose it is a testament to the power of ideas and the relevance of this month's topic that I can trace many of my own social and political epiphanies to a specific book or film. The Ideas may have been floating through my head unspoken but it was through a given story that they found a voice.
One such film was The Outlaw Josey Whales. This movie, this very scene, altered the course of my life. It encapsulatedan attitude, that I already held but had never expressed.
Governments don't live together, people live together. No paper can hold the iron.
Sweet words don't make something so, Government edict doesn't make something so, only mutual resolve and respect can make something so. Ten Bears did not respect the US government and the US government did not respect the natives, thus thier treaty was doomed to be broken from the moment it was proposed. Ten Bears does respect Josey, and Josey respects Ten Bears, thier treaty will stand.
The question I pose to the community is...
What books or films triggered a socio-political awakening in you and how?
Edit: Cue UL's reply of Josey was a confederate and thus the devil incarnate...
One such film was The Outlaw Josey Whales. This movie, this very scene, altered the course of my life. It encapsulatedan attitude, that I already held but had never expressed.
Governments don't live together, people live together. No paper can hold the iron.
Sweet words don't make something so, Government edict doesn't make something so, only mutual resolve and respect can make something so. Ten Bears did not respect the US government and the US government did not respect the natives, thus thier treaty was doomed to be broken from the moment it was proposed. Ten Bears does respect Josey, and Josey respects Ten Bears, thier treaty will stand.
The question I pose to the community is...
What books or films triggered a socio-political awakening in you and how?
Edit: Cue UL's reply of Josey was a confederate and thus the devil incarnate...
(no subject)
Date: 3/10/11 20:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3/10/11 20:42 (UTC)(And yes I'm being serious. Kinda. Sorta. In the Zaphod Beeblebrox sort of serious way).
(no subject)
Date: 3/10/11 21:52 (UTC)"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that."
From the sequel but...
Date: 3/10/11 22:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3/10/11 22:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3/10/11 21:58 (UTC)Blazing Saddles. Taught me to laugh at racist white people.
Executive Action
Date: 3/10/11 22:03 (UTC)I don't believe there was a conspiracy along the lines outlined in this movie, but it's great drama, and is a powerful insight in the American psyche in the mid 1970s, who were extremely jaded about their government with all the cover-ups and scandals of the previous 15 years.
(no subject)
Date: 3/10/11 22:59 (UTC)Lucifer's Hammer taught me that it's very important to be armed in the case of collapse. (fiction)
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 05:18 (UTC)now i may have to check that out ~ thanks for sharing that.
Clint Eastwood...good choice.
Date: 4/10/11 00:00 (UTC)I couldn't name any particular piece of fiction or non-fiction as being the one that influenced me most. I've always had an independent streak and a curious mind. When I want to know something about a particular controversy, I try never to take anyone's assertion at face value. I dig down into the history of the debate, get the gist of all sides of the argument from the originators and then decide for myself which side makes sense. The more I read of these eternal debates, and dug down into the metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics underlying them, the more I came to understand that human collectivism frequently becomes an escape mechanism for people to escape reality through the action of the diffusion of responsibility inherent in group action and group identity. The movie, and especially this scene, featuring the meeting of Forrest Carter's Josey Wales and Chief Ten Bears, as envisioned by Sonia Chernus and Philip Kaufman for the movie, brilliantly encapsulates this idea in a piece of drama. It's a good choice.
"All the shrewdness of 'man' seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility."
— Soren Kierkegaard
"Men, it has been said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
— Charles Mackay
"The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole."
— Eric Hoffer
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 00:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 00:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 00:26 (UTC)Six of them influenced what I'm for:
Animal Farm is an extremely influential book, both in terms of the parable it contains and in the history of how it came to be published.
1984 equally so for the same reasons.
The Discourses by Niccolo Machiavelli are extremely good defenses of republicanism and the citizen-soldier concept.
Common Sense and The Federalist Papers are very good summaries of what the Founding Fathers intended, always useful for that matter with debating people who think US political history stopped in the 1780s.
The Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant influenced a lot of my philosophy on war. It's damn good, clear writing.
The books influencing what I'm against:
Mein Kampf-not only one of the most evil books ever written but so poorly done as a book that James Joyce looks more intelligible by comparison. This was a cautionary lesson on what people will call genius if given a sufficient push to so do.
What Is To Be Done-^That in Russian and about Communism. Lenin's rather boring and that anyone hailed *him* as a genius is equally cautionary.
Watchmen-the source of my deep and remorseless hatred of Objectivism as Rorschach is a very good one.
Timeline-191-the most chilling "It can happen here" parable in science fiction.
And last but not least
Anything and everything ever written by historical falsifiers of all stripes, persuasions, and ideologies.
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 01:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 11:18 (UTC)Everything I needed to know about what a Libertarian society would be like I learned from Mad Max as well.
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 13:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 13:26 (UTC)Interesting considering libertarianism hasn't created anything anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 14:59 (UTC)Force creates nothing. It only destroys.
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 15:10 (UTC)No, actually, it just takes credit for all of that. That has been going on throughout history before the libertarian ideal was formed.
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 15:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 17:48 (UTC)Things libertarianism has not created: war, genocide, the war on drugs, forced starvation, the prison-industrial complex, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, slavery, the police state, the nanny state, the surveillance state, the boom-bust cycle, inflation, Auschwitz, gun control, internment camps, the Waco siege, anthropogenic global warming, The Great Leap Forward, the $14 Trillion+ debt, $1600+ gold, serfdom, death squads, Blackwater, targeted assassinations of American citizens living abroad, Gitmo, etc., off the top of my head.
But wow, you sure showed me!
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 17:58 (UTC)Yeah. Like I said. It has created nothing. Thanks for conceding the point.
Math Lesson
Date: 4/10/11 17:59 (UTC)Re: Math Lesson
Date: 4/10/11 18:01 (UTC)252 million what?
Re: Math Lesson
Date: 4/10/11 18:04 (UTC)Re: Math Lesson
Date: 4/10/11 18:08 (UTC)So that's the entirety of your argument? To sit on the sidelines in uyour little libertarian fantasy and take pot shots at reality?
Re: Math Lesson
Date: 5/10/11 04:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/10/11 12:20 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 02:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 03:35 (UTC)and, i can't say I've had many socio-political awakenings, just spiritual ones. but i will keep thinking on the matter k
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 03:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 04:31 (UTC)Because there are winners and then everyone else, and America loves a winner.
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 05:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 06:01 (UTC)[Error: unknown template 'video']
(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 08:19 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 5/10/11 04:43 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 13:17 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/10/11 17:39 (UTC)